Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Bloomberg – Theodoro Messa’s Paineiras Hedge FIM hedge fund beat 96 percent of its peers this year on bets Brazilian bond yields will fall as the central banks slashes borrowing costs to shore up Latin America’s largest economy.
Messa is buying bonds and avoiding stocks because the global recession will persist longer than investors expect, requiring Brazilian policy makers to deepen interest rate cuts, he said. He predicts zero economic growth for Brazil in 2009.
Reuters – Bridgewater Associates Inc, one of the world’s biggest hedge-fund managers, said on Tuesday it might be interested in participating in the U.S. Treasury’s public-private investment program, calling it a "big transfer of money from the government to the banks and to the buyers."
Bridgewater manages roughly $80 billion in global investments for a wide array of institutional clients, including foreign governments and central banks.
In a letter to clients, Bridgewater said its interest in buying the distressed assets under the terms being offered would depend on the pricing and on "whether we can get over our fears of partnering with the government."
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – “We welcome the publication of the Turner Review, which is an impressive and comprehensive piece of work." Andrew Baker, Chief Executive of The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), said, "It is about the banking system’s role in the current financial crisis and as such its principal focus is the banks, not the hedge fund industry. We are grateful to Lord Turner for his even-handed and measured approach and for not making hedge funds the scapegoat for this crisis."
"The Review says that regulators and central banks need to gather better macro-prudential information on hedge fund activities and we completely support this – in fact we called, in our new policy platform of the 24th February, for the disclosure of systemically significant information by hedge fund managers to their national regulators (not all assets are managed in a collective fund structure). We also called for a global manager authorisation and supervision template on the FSA model. AIMA took the lead on behalf of the hedge fund industry globally in these respects.
We are glad that the Review points out that hedge fund leverage “is typically well below that of banks – about two to three on average” compared with levels of up to 50 times with some of the banks; and that “hedge funds in general are not today bank-like in their activities”.
Given those qualifications, we do appreciate why in the interests of financial stability the Review says that regulators need the power to apply appropriate prudential regulation to hedge funds if they judge that their activities have become bank-like in importance.
We note that any such regulation is hypothetical at present (the Review talks of “if it ever did become appropriate” to do this) and we are glad that Lord Turner has stressed that any regulation in this respect should focus on economic substance not legal form.”
AIMA has more than 1,200 corporate members worldwide, based in 43 countries.
Members include leading hedge fund managers, fund of hedge funds managers, prime brokers, legal and accounting firms and fund administrators. They all benefit from AIMA’s active influence in policy development, its leadership in industry initiatives, including education and sound practice manuals and its excellent reputation with regulators worldwide.
Reuters – Asian stocks rose to a two-month high on Monday, with expectations for a global economic recovery later this year on the back of massive government spending prompting investors to wade back into riskier assets.
Regional equities have risen for six consecutive days, bolstered by expectations big government stimulus spending packages in coming weeks will revive growth and banks will eventually lend to each other again.
Major European stocks were expected to open as much as 0.4 percent higher, according to financial bookmakers, on hopes companies will benefit from the collective efforts of central banks and other policymakers.
